Along the Natchez Trace

Overlooking the Natchez Trace National Park Road

Louise Standing in the Old Trace

Tennessee River Bridge

Stepping Stones To Spring Pond

Spring Pond

Beaver Dam at Spring Pond

The Mounds

Overlook

Our ride

Meriwether Lewis Monument

Grinder House where Lewis died

The Gorden House

The Gorden Ferry Crossing

Jackson Falls

Confederate Cemetery

Head stones of 13 Confederates

Fungus near the cave

Cave

Bear mound

Arch Bridge Over Valley

We left Bowling Green, Ky on Monday after a nice visit with my brother who lives there. Heading for the Natchez Trace National Parkway, we missed a turn and ended up driving through a real ritzy neighborhood. The sign said no vehicles over 5 tons, I guess we should not have been there....lol. By that time there was no way I could turn around, so forward we went. Finally, we found the route we needed to get to the start of the Parkway. I looked at the web site later and found out there was a real easy way to go, oh well I guess I need to do a better job of planning since we are pulling 40 feet of trailer.

The Parkway starts just south of Nashville, TN and and ends in Natchez, MS. The "Trace" is a path that the river boat crews took back to Nashville after going down river to Natchez. They would sell there goods and there flat boats in Netchez and walk or ride a horse back. They could not paddle the boats up stream so they sold them for lumber. The trail today is 444 miles long and follows the original trail pretty close. There are pull out after pull out with information boards about what happened there. Many of them require a short walk to get to the site. The first day we made 8o miles of the Trace. The second day we hurried along for 120 miles. At this rate we will be on the Trace for a week..lol We stop at most of the pullouts to read the signage and sometimes take the walks. We are spending the next couple of days in Tupelo, MS so we take the time to see more sites in this area before heading on.

The Parkway has a 50 mph speed limit and so far has been a been a beautiful drive. The traffic is real light except around the bigger cities. The locals use it to avoid the traffic lights in town, there are no lights on the Parkway.

The first night out we stayed at the Meriwether Lewis campground. This campground is National Park run and has no hookups but is free. When we got there our battery in the trailer was low because I left lights on in the trailer while we were going down the road. We ran the generator a while to build it back up. I was worried that maybe something else was drawing it down, so when we went to bed we turned everything off including the furnace to make sure it would ok in the morning. It got COLD that night. The temperature went down to 38. In the morning got out of bed, got the generator going and turned the HEAT UP. We have carried my old wool blanket with us since we hit the road. Louise wanted to leave it behind the last time we left TX because it is really heavy and bulky, but wanted to keep it. Good thing we did, we needed it that night. I need to get another battery the trailer so we can boondock easier. Last night found us in the Natchez Trace campground with full hookups. We were warm last night!!

Till next time

Duane and Louise